Using Mark Steyn as the example was a joke. The point was that laws that outlaw these bad things inflict extensive collateral damage.

The earlier point about facts was that the New York Times article was written at a time when we didn’t even know who had been killed or by whom.

dglp didn’t claim to know that the terrorists were thinking “You’re not freaking out! What’s wrong with you?”. He expressed a preference for that as a sentiment to project. If you disagree with that preference you are free to say something like “Denying the real pain inflicted by these attacks might merely spur terrorists to reach new and greater depths—look at the World Trade Center for example”. Point made and not an insult in sight.

I’m not sure that anyone has to prove that this couldn’t possibly be the case to disagree with it however. There is much that we don’t know isn’t possible. Often there are lots of things we don’t know are possible and have to make a judgement about reality without being able to eliminate all alternatives as impossible.

For someone so worried about other people imputing thoughts to other people and about people restricing other peoples speech you are very loose with your paraphrasing and surprisingly censorious in your manner.

“A law that made most of these speeches illegal would make a lot of things illegal—Mark Steyn possibly.” This is of course a well-supported conclusion, arrived by a rigorous, irrefutable, detailed argument which is a nice contrast to my “opaque” reasoning and my “non-sequiturs”! Now I’m converted.

(And personally I don’t see what’s so important about Mark Steyn that he should be allowed to speak. He’s just as loony as any Islamic fundamentalist, except he’s not gotten to the point of exhorting others to kill. Or has he?)

And in case you’re still too block-headed to get the point about dglp reading minds: how does he know that “You’re not freaking out! What’s wrong with you?” is what the terrorists are thinking, and perhaps if “we” just presevere a little more, the terrorists will give up and convert to Christianity. For all we know, they may be thinking, “They’re not freaking out. Well, let’s just try harder next time. And if that still doesn’t work, let’s try even harder. We will definitely succeed in the end, for Allah is on our side.” I defy anyone to prove that this can’t be the case.

Possibly you have a point but are too inarticulate to express it clearly (that might explain the extravageant markup and use of capitals) or maybe I’m an idiot for not paying sufficient attention to the bells on your hat and bladder on a stick in your hand before responding. In any case I find you rude, incoherent, trite, gnomic and smug.

So why is Rice repeating false terrorist propaganda?

Doesn’t she know better?

J Thomas: But maybe we should look at ways that the government can find out who’s making bombs without actually restricting our other freedoms. If we could build a government that we could trust with our private information, then it would all work out.

That’s an idea.

dglp: ‘You’re not freaking out! What’s wrong with you?!

And of course, dglp knows how to read the minds of terrorists. Now tell us exactly where the next bomb will be, otherwise you’re committing treason.

Interesting comment, because Rice was actually quoting an IRA spokesman.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/grandbombing.shtml

soru

“(scratches head)”

I think he’s implying that his target is from marz or points west.

(scratches head)

I nevertheless think that such a law would be a bad idea.

This is completely wrong-headed. It comes from an appalling provincialism, an unwillingness to look at things from the other guy’s point of view.

Terrorists don’t get an unlimited number of tries. Every time they try and fail they risk everything—they risk losing their own lives for nothing, they risk their whole organisation. From their point of view they have to succeed every time.

Given an unlimited number of separate terrorist organisations, then sure we’ll fail. They’ll achieve minor successes like 9/11 and this british thing, and the governments involved will get bad publicity. But it isn’t enough for them to win once. They haven’t yet made an attack that destroyed 1% of a nation’s GDP. A hundred 9/11s wouldn’t be enough for them to win. They’d just make the american government look bad for not stopping them.

If you look at it from the point of view of an american bureaucrat who gets held responsible for every terrorist action that makes the news, then it looks bad. But if you look at it from the point of view of a terrorist it looks bad for him too. Sometimes life sucks.

[quote][b]The whole reason Bush wants to take it to ‘their’ homes is becuase we can’t reliably provide the kind of security needed to keep them from coming into our homes to blow us up and simultaneously keep our civil liberties.[/b][/quote]

It’s hard to do mindreading with Bush. Up until recently the thing that seemed to best predict his actions was he’d do whatever would improve his polls among his voting blocks. But now that prediction fails and he’s promoting an unpopular war and an unpopular social security system.

Apart from Bush, though, this argunent is fatally flawed. The USA has a lot of enemies, and we expect to make a lot more. Our problem is not arabs or muslims, our problem is everybody in the world who’s opposed to the USA and who’s willing to do terrorism. And as the rest of the world sees how frighteningly vulnerable we are, we can expect attacks from lots of places—including from americans who for one reason or another want to do terrorist attacks in their own country.

“taking it to the enemy” is like, well….

It’s like, say a wasp stings you. And you decide you have to find the nest that wasp came from and destroy it. And you buy a ton of insecticide and you go out trying to kill every wasp nest or bees nest you find, and while you’re out lookiong for wasp nests with your 80 pound insecticide backpack you stumble into a deep mudhole.

So about civil liberties. We don’t have the right bo bomb other people’s property or public property. Bomb your own house if you want to.

We don’t know how to stop people from bombing other people’s property and still give them full privacy. OK, we have to either accept that our crazy neighbors might bomb us or we have to give up a lot of privacy.

I think all the other civil liberties arguments are based on our distrust of our government. We figure we’ll only keep our liberties if the goverment doesn’t know about them. But maybe we should look at ways that the government can find out who’s making bombs without actually restricting our other freedoms. If we could build a government that we could trust with our private information, then it would all work out.